Physical Intelligence

Shirin Ghaffary

@shiringhaffary

NEW: AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence has raised $600m at a $5.6 bil valuation, w/ CapitalG leading, per sources. Earlier this week, Pi released a new RL model that it says can help robots do tasks like fold laundry, pack boxes more quickly https://t.co/SaSa62lqy3

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

My conversation with Sergey Levine (@svlevine). Sergey is the co-founder of @physical_int -- a company building foundation models that can control any robot to do any task in any environment. The company's thesis is that generality is more scalable than specialization, meaning that a model trained across many different robots and tasks will ultimately outperform any system built to do one thing well (eg, just wash dishes). Sergey is a researcher by background, but I think you will appreciate how practical and commercially grounded this conversation is. We discuss: - Why changing a diaper will be the last task a robot masters - The simulation v. real-world data debate - How multimodal LLMs give robots common sense - Moravec's Paradox + Robot Olympics - Why robots can do long-horizon tasks now - A realistic timeline for robots in our homes I should note that I am an investor in Physical Intelligence -- I made the investment because I believe it is one of the most important companies tackling the problem of robotics. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:39 Defining Physical Intelligence 5:19 The Challenge of Building General Models 6:34 The Stakes and Future of General Purpose Robotics 8:15 Pros and Cons of Humanoid Robots 10:12 Historical Milestones in Robotics Research 15:31 Combining Generative AI and Deep RL 21:24 Moravec's Paradox 25:33 Kitchen Robots 29:30 Simulation vs. Real-World Data 30:48 The Robot Olympics 36:31 The Physiological Reality of Embodiment 38:56 Controversies in the Robotics Community 44:18 What Makes a Great Researcher 48:27 How Businesses Should Prepare for Robotics 54:09 Tracking Progress Through Research Papers 57:02 The Next Step: Mid-Level Reasoning 1:02:00 The Kindest Thing

Amir Efrati

@amir

new: Anthropic wants to get into robotics, has discussed buying @physical_int https://t.co/bCCPkaxVCu

Stephanie Palazzolo

@steph_palazzolo

The Anthropic-Physical Intelligence rumors have some seed of truth to them. The firms had early M&A talks this spring but didn’t end up going anywhere. More recently, Jan Leike, Anthropic’s ex-head of alignment, has been leading its robotics efforts: https://t.co/ZYH9DVowJ8

Lukas Ziegler

@lukas_m_ziegler

JUST IN: @physical_int raising $1B at $11B+ valuation! The valuation has doubled in 4 months! Physical Intelligence, the SF robotics startup, is in discussions to raise about $1 billion in new funding at a valuation exceeding $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. @foundersfund is set to participate, with @lightspeedvp also in talks to invest alongside returning backers @ThriveCapital and @Lux_Capital. The deal is still in early stages and details could change. Physical Intelligence builds general-purpose AI models that can power robots to perform a wide variety of tasks, from folding laundry to peeling vegetables. The company raised just over $1 billion previously and employs about 80 people. Co-founder Lachy Groom: "There's no limit to how much money we can really put to work. There's always more compute you can throw at the problem." No timeline for commercialization: An unusual posture that investors don't seem to mind, given the rapid valuation increases. This is foundation model economics hitting robotics. Physical Intelligence follows the OpenAI playbook: raise massive capital, scale compute, improve models through data and scale, commercialize later. Investors are betting that whoever builds the best general-purpose robotic foundation model will capture enormous value. Read more: https://t.co/wUavT4ve1n ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news → https://t.co/GoA3ZuwoPB

Ziwei Liu

@liuziwei7

🍎Thinking with Video towards Law-Grounded Physical Intelligence🍎 🥧Apple-π🥧 is the first benchmark that asks video models to reason through explicit physical laws w/ an auditable test of physical intelligence - Project: https://t.co/Rw3YqYBf2B - Code: https://t.co/niGi2LYNFC https://t.co/iIlaKOrpRC

Sergey Levine

Co-founder

UC Berkeley professor and leading robot-learning researcher who co-leads Physical Intelligence's research.

Chelsea Finn

Co-founder

Stanford assistant professor known for meta-learning research; co-founder of Physical Intelligence.

Lachy Groom

Co-founder & President

Early Stripe executive and investor who co-founded Physical Intelligence and serves as its president.

Comus H.

Shift Lead

Previously at Ntangle · Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Joined May 2026

Keith Williams

Member of Technical Staff

Previously at Dyna Robotics · Menlo Park, California, United States

Joined May 2026

Dorcas Okyere-Sarkodie

Operations

Previously at GRIPHCON TECH · San Francisco, California, United States

Joined Jun 2026

Tymek Rost

Robotics Operator

Previously at University of California, Davis · San Francisco, California, United States

Joined May 2026

Will P.

Operator

Previously at Counterpart Ventures · San Francisco Bay Area

Joined May 2026

Jaiveer Bassi

Robot Operator

Previously at House of Seva · Vallejo, California, United States

Joined Apr 2026